Menu

thoughts on the spaces in between

Category Archives: life lessons

We exchanged emails last night – and now I’m without adequate words. This post will not do anything justice, and yet…I feel like there’s so much I want to say.

I’m sitting in my little office, surrounded by pictures of my family – parents who I miss daily, Andy, my boys who are now men, daughters-in-law, granddaughters. This is where I feel most comforted, most bewildered, most loved. I have one of your photographs framed here too. An abundance, truly. It can make my heart hurt. I whisper “thank you, thank you” throughout the day. I can think of no better mantra.

We’ve never met, yet I feel like we’ve known each other for years. How do I console you when I am literally across the ocean? How do I begin to articulate to you – a man of faith and family, deep love and incredible grace – that I have an ache deep within that exists with yours. How I pray for a miracle, even though I know that you and your wife have made peace with something I am railing against. Yours is one of those once in a lifetime loves – and though I believe it transcends time, I want you both to celebrate it together forever. Petulant, I know. Selfish, I agree – for this is not about me at all.

I pause to look once more at your magical new grandson, as he is held with some distractedness by his toddler sister. Her eyes are luminous, filled with some whimsy and a little mischief. You are literally in the midst of the alpha and the omega. One struggles with this most profound of extremes. Yet, you sent me peace last night. How can that be? In your deepest sorrow, you offered me gratitude for feeling the telepathic connection that has caused us to write each other out of the blue for a few years now. How can that be?

Cherished friend, I wish you peace. I am thankful that your faith is deep and your family surrounds you. I wish your beloved wife time…time to delight in your love and the love of her children. I wish she could stay. What can I say, I’ve never been one for small wishes when it comes to those I hold so close in my heart. Needless to say, I’ll check in again soon, perhaps with better words – though that’s unlikely. What can one say when there are no words? Only these random murmurings. Much love..xx

There are many stories in here, so forgive the multiple parentheticals – recognizing of course, that really talented writers don’t use them often. Ah well, I’ve never claimed to be a really talented writer.

Anyway, I was speaking with my builder last week. A few years ago, her birthday gift from her husband was a girls’ weekend at an exclusive hotel. These women have been friends for years; there are no secrets. Well, with an abundance of alcohol there are no secrets. And they imbibed – a lot. One of her friends has been happily married for many years. Great guy – sweet, attentive, doting – the kind of guy everyone else in the group holds up as the example when they’re arguing with their spouses.

After many drinks, her friend acknowledged that as much as she loved him, he wasn’t her ‘Stewart’. Stewart was the one who got away. Her college sweetheart – part dog, part romantic fool. She was besotted, he was hormonal. But she held out a fantasy, wondering for years, ‘what if’.

To abbreviate the tale, over the years her feelings for her husband have replaced that wonder. She adores him – even though he wasn’t her ‘Stewart’.

I’ve never had a Stewart. Perhaps it’s because I married often enough that by the time I hit 30, the prospect of a fantasy romance would have just enervated me. I was a single mom with two boys under the age of five. And honestly, being a mom was pretty much the only fantasy I ever really had that I insisted on making a reality (but that’s another story).

So let’s move on.

Have I told you that my sister is flippin’ brilliant? On so many levels, this woman amazes me constantly (Debbie, I know you are shaking your head, telling me that this is same-sex, birth order bullshit – and even if you’re right, so what? It is what it is. Truth for sure – and some residual younger-sister-will-never-be-as-good neurosis for good measure). She is beautiful, scary smart, talented beyond measure – and she is a writer – the legitimate kind. In one of her recent stories she wrote “you fall in love with the way someone falls in love with you”. Brilliant.

And true.

I fell in love with the way Andy fell in love with me. He made himself fit into my life with such an abundance of heart, romance, delight – he introduced me to his magic and I was ultimately mesmerized. He is my Stewart, but he isn’t the one who got away. He’s the one who stayed.

We may fall in love with the vision of love that we see, but we stay in love with the person who orchestrated the imagery. The person who may not be who we first saw (and are we the person they first saw?), but who’s in it with you. The person who can be your best friend and some weird extra-terrestrial at the same time and still be cute. The one who drives you crazy in every conceivable way. I’m a kite; Andy is an anchor. He’s judgmental; I’m not (but for my expectations of sub-contractors working on our house, but they’re not reading this). We are opposite sides of the same coin – and that is the kind of love that can’t be fabricated by fantasy.

We fall in love with the way someone falls in love with us. True enough. We love the person who knew how to make that happen. Perhaps I never had a Stewart because I have an Andy. And even though this has absolutely nothing to do with what I intended to pen today, it is what’s been on my mind all morning. So, I guess therein is another story.

We’ve moved. We’re in our new house. It is lovely, really. True, the microwave doesn’t open, the dishwasher is confused about its purpose, there’s a wine fridge but it too is inoperable, and though I have a double oven, it has to be replaced or repaired. Did I mention that our refrigerator legs aren’t locked, so that it creeps along surreptitiously, advancing with little notice until it kisses the wall?

Of course, as with every new house, there’s a punch list that is lengthy – and I now understand why it is in fact called a ‘punch’ list.

At night, our boxes multiply as if their souls were rabbits. And each morning, I look around in disbelief that there are so damn many them. The yard is not seeded, sodded or fenced, so the Sirs and I walk with our heads down – our neighbors must look at the mosh pit that is the front yard and shake their heads with displeasure. Some of the doors don’t lock properly yet, but what the heck, I can always make someone a cup of coffee.

And yet.

I love that I have landed. I may not be able to find my way through this morass even with a compass and clear head (I lack both) – but I am home. A place to create new memories, walls that will hold laughter and baby giggles, words from family and friends, new secrets and old stories that are told and re-told for their lessons and familial value – all will be protected by this structure. When you cross our threshold, you will know you are welcome. I think that is what I have missed most about our old home (other than the fact that my kids were still under the roof). It was ‘home’ to all who entered – shoes were off, people curled up on couches, succumbing to those drooly kind of naps, big Thanksgiving dinners, intimate moments with friends around the kitchen table.

I wish my whole family was local, but I am so, so grateful for those who are here. I think as you get older, you treasure ‘home’ differently. It isn’t about acquisitiveness any longer – on the contrary, that which isn’t essential to your heart is purged – it’s about holding on to that which is most important to you. And reveling in it. Perhaps therein lies my impatience. I want to find the pictures of my parents, the cards my sons gave me when they were small. I want to ‘feel’ my life in what I touch.

Andy keeps telling me to go slow, that this isn’t a marathon – he’s right of course. I’m driven by a compelling force to snuggle into what I know, before I begin to create something new. If our fence was up, I’d have one foot in the new and the other in the old. Barring that, I’m just going to keep going until I uncover all those priceless treasures that I have missed for almost a year. And whisper with delight and gratitude, ‘There you are! Thank you for waiting for me!’.

The year is coming to a close…and I struggle to write of joyous moments and rhythmic episodes of delight. I know they were there – as I often say, in those spaces in between. They were in the moments with Sophie’s head on my shoulder or singing (so to speak) on our walks; listening to Sienna imitate all the animal noises she knows and feeling the tenderness of her cheek; watching my sons as adoring fathers…the incredible kindness and love of friends near and far; the excitement of a new home (which with a little luck and prayer we will get into next week); sunsets that took my breath and sunrises that gave it back…

Yes…undeniably there have been moments, magical, wondrous moments.

And yet, this has also been a particularly strange and disorienting year. Certainly being in temporary living quarters, without Andy more often than not, has been particularly upending. Somehow as we get older it seems we lose more people – or perhaps age makes us more sensitive to these departures. And in every corner of the world, there is pain – palpable, horrid, unrelenting pain – that one can’t ignore. The faces of children – hungry, broken, scared; real-time nightmares from which one cannot look away. I spend a lot of time seeking comfort, for it all hurts so damn much.

And I don’t get it, I swear I don’t…I don’t get hate, vitriol, bias, ignorance…I don’t get power grabs considered more valuable than the heartbeats of our children – anywhere in the world. What are we doing? Kleenex stock must be doing really well, for I’m certainly using my share.

And yet…yet, I hope. I hope that you all receive all that you wish for and wish for all that you have. I wish that the orbit of the earth, spins just slightly askew, so that we can stop perhaps, rewind and try again to create something enduring and universally reflective of the beauty of the heart. I hope…for all of us..

The night was sleepless and I’m wide awake…and the co-existence of contradictory realities seems to prevail. I am a contradiction in terms – held together by the small inhalations between words. You’d think that living within duality would at least offer up some deep slumber at the end of a day. Ha.

Here’s one for you – I stopped believing in atheism a long time ago (yes, an oxymoron with a little hint of humor). About the time I stopped writing everything in lower case and pretending that I was a potential hybrid of joni mitchell and e.e. cummings. That said, I still belief in disbelief, if disbelief equals wonder and incredulity and stuff that’s just really hard to believe.

I believe in God. I believe that there is something that I can’t adequately explain and seek daily, even though I know it’s there. We have conversations (ok – I do all the talking, but given my profession and personality, that’s not too common). Perhaps as my sister notes, the older we get, the more comfort we seek – whether it be in a more spiritual grounding, greater connections with others, opening our eyes and arms a bit wider – or all of the above. One’s world may become more circumspect while one’s outlook widens….see what I mean?

I believe in humankind despite our reiterative behaviors of intentional cruelty and deplorable injustice. It exists within the same construct as acts of graciousness and generosity that I witness everyday. I cry over both. And a sunrise can be as comforting as a sunset. Go figure.

So much for the theory that it can be absolutely one thing or another. Life is beautiful and unforgivably ugly. We seek forgiveness when we find it difficult to forgive. We ask for people to be held accountable and shy away from personal responsibility. We’re a funny species – which makes me wonder why we came up with ‘oxymoron’ – it’s not a particularly appealing word.

And yet –

Faith is unassailable. Small wonders are unassailable – the magnificence of a child delighting in the way a flower yields to its touch; the silliness of dancing while taking a walk (me, with my earphones on, and yes, I did make sure there was no one around); those kinds of hugs where you feel completely surrounded by love and warmth; sunlight on spiderwebs…

And somehow it is through that prism that we look everyday – how we hold our days, each other, our lives. Through its angles we are fractured and we are gorgeous, a spectrum of dualities that make no sense and yet belong together. So I repeat, go figure..